


Sometimes Dreams Are Not What They Seem

by Luthien



Series: Luthien Does Writer's Month 2019 [13]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Australia, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Angst, Australia, F/M, Holiday Fling, holiday romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 07:31:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20305756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthien/pseuds/Luthien
Summary: The aftermath of the car accident.Fill for Writer's Month 2019 Day 12: Dreams





	Sometimes Dreams Are Not What They Seem

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Telanu for the beta, and Nire for the reassurance when I was trying to work out whether this worked at 3.00 this morning!
> 
> Also, yeah, I have totally given up on the idea of doing every single one of the 31 Writer's Month prompts. Now that this storyline has been going for a while, the stories are getting more emotionally complicated, and longer, and I just can't write that much in a single day. I'm just going to pick out the prompts I like best and those will take us to the end of the Aussie Coffee 'verse - eventually.

Brienne waited in the car for a minute or so, while Jaime presumably went to exchange insurance details with the driver of the vehicle that had run into them. As it started to dawn on her that she was probably suffering a tiny bit of shock, she became aware of raised voices outside—and one of them was definitely Jaime's. Brienne fumbled with the buckle of her seatbelt and got out of the car.

Jaime was standing with his back to her, but even from here it was impossible to miss the stiffness of the way he stood with legs slightly apart, the tension radiating from his shoulders, and how his hands were balled into tight fists.

"Don't get out of the car, Brienne!" he said, without turning around.

"Brianna, is it? Thanks for that, Jaime!" The speaker was a middle-aged man of barely more than medium height, with dark, lank hair and a straggly brown beard. The most striking feature on his otherwise unremarkable face was a long, pale scar running down the side of his cheek below his right eye.

"Jaime?" Brienne asked, as she reached him. "What's going on?" And what sort of coincidence was it that Jaime should know the person who had run into the back of his car on a country road far from where he lived? Not a good one, Brienne was sure.

"It doesn't matter. I'll explain, but you need to get back into the car," Jaime said through clenched teeth.

"God, you're a tall one," the other man said, looking Brienne up and down in a way that made her feel as if she'd just stepped in something putrid. And then, without as much as a by your leave, he grabbed the camera hanging from a strap around his neck and started taking pictures of them.

Brienne blinked against the flashes. What-

"Back in the car!" Jaime said in a hard undervoice she'd never heard from him before, but he didn't try to hurry back with her, as she half-expected. Instead, he drew his fist back, just as he had with Hyle on the beach yesterday, so Brienne knew precisely what was bound to happen next.

She grabbed him, not just his arm but around the waist as well. She didn't think about it. She was already holding him back by the time she got around to wondering whether it was a good idea or not. She stumbled as his arm moved and half-took her with it, but she regained her balance after a split second and held on even tighter. She was taller than Jaime, and maybe just as strong, thanks to all the physical activity she did in her work as well as her frequent work-outs at the gym. It also helped that he hadn't been expecting her to grab him and try to restrain him.

"Great!" said the other man, the photographer or whatever he was, still snapping away, as Jaime's head whipped around and he shot a fierce glare at Brienne.

"Let's _both_ get back in the car, Jaime," she said, not flinching from that look and not loosening her hold on him either. "And then you can tell me what's going on."

"Oh, I can tell you that, love," the photographer said. "You're about to get your fifteen minutes of fame!"

"You can let go of me," Jaime said to her. "I'm not going to hit him. A piece of slime like him isn't worth the hassle." His body still felt tense under Brienne's hands, but the edge of not-so-restrained violence seemed to have left him, so she let go of everything but his arm. Her hand slipped down his forearm to find his and clutch it tight. "You'll be hearing from my lawyers, Locke," he said to the photographer.

"There's nothing illegal about taking photographs in public. Nothing illegal about having a little accident, either, however unfortunate it might be for the vehicles involved." Locke let his gaze linger on the crumpled back of the Aston Martin, what little of it could be seen thanks to the front of his own white SUV still obscuring most of it.

"I think the law might have something to say about purposely running into the back of a stationary vehicle just to ensure that the occupants got out," Jaime said, his voice sounding pleasanter now, but in a way that sent a shiver of apprehension down Brienne's spine.

The photographer smirked. "Good luck proving that!"

"Excuse me." One of the road workers came up to them. "Is everyone all right?"

"Everyone's fine, at least for now," Jaime said, still giving the photographer a hard, cold look. "Though the same can't be said for my car."

"Then would you mind moving your vehicles out of the way, if they're driveable? We need to let the other traffic through," the road worker said.

"Let's get back in the car, Jaime," Brienne urged. Whatever was going on here, no good would come from continuing the confrontation with Locke. And besides, Brienne needed to have her own conversation with Jaime, and as soon as possible.

With one last, lingering glance at Locke, Jaime turned and let Brienne lead him away. Once they were back in the car, Jaime wasted no time starting up the engine and carefully, carefully inching forward until he was apparently satisfied that the Aston Martin was quite free of the SUV. He did a U-turn and took them back the way they'd come. However, he drove only a little way before pulling over by the side of the road, and getting out to check the damage at the back of the car.

Brienne sat in silence, staring down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. She felt unsettled and jittery—reaction starting to set in, a too-calm voice in her head told her. Reaction to the crash, and reaction to the revelation that Jaime was someone worth a paparazzi photographer's time. Worth a pap's time to chase him and crash into his car, just to get a picture of him on holiday.

Jaime hadn't lied to her. He'd told her he was a businessman, and that his family company owned the building he worked in. He hadn't tried to pretend that his beautiful, expensive sports car belonged to anyone but himself. He stayed frequently in what was obviously the best accommodation that the exclusive resort by the beach had to offer. It was clear that he had money, and quite a bit of it. But he hadn't told Brienne the full truth. He hadn't given her any warning that being pursued by a photographer could be something that might happen during their week together.

He should have told her. But then, there were things about herself that Brienne, trying to be mindful of Margaery's advice about holiday flings, hadn't shared. She'd mentioned her mother, but she hadn't told Jaime about her brother, and most particularly she hadn't said a word about her father. But those were only personal things. They only mattered in terms of understanding some of what had made Brienne the person she was, and how she came to be here, now, at the right time to cross paths with Jaime Lannister.

Jaime Lannister. Not just the man she knew as Jaime. _Jaime Lannister…_

Brienne got out her phone and googled him.

First was a Wikipedia page, which at least confirmed to Brienne that he hadn't lied to her about his age or his marital status. People also searched for Tywin Lannister, Tyrion Lannister and Cersei Baratheon, apparently. There were news articles from the business sections, and even more from the gossip pages, and when she looked at the images that the search results had thrown up… Well, Brienne almost felt like throwing up herself.

There was Jaime, again and again and again: now with slightly longer, sun-streaked hair, now wearing it shorter and darker and more conservative; now in a dark business suit complete with a tie in a perfect windsor knot, now shirtless on a beach in nothing but a pair of shorts. But always, always, _always_ there was a woman, either hanging off his arm, or pictured in a separate box beside the photo of him, or even, once, staring into his eyes on a hotel balcony. Never the same woman twice, all of them tall, but not too tall, and beautiful with stunning figures and faces, and perfect hair.

Brienne was still staring at the pictures when Jaime got back into the car. "It'll be okay to drive the rest of the way back, but it's going to take some work to fix it," he said, sounding pained.

"So, you're famous," Brienne said quietly.

Jaime let out a long breath.

Brienne made herself look up from her phone and look at him. The pain was clear on his face, in the furrowing of his brow and the tension around the corners of his eyes, while his mouth… His mouth, the mouth that Brienne had kissed, all unknowing of who she was kissing, that had kissed her and brought her such pleasure—that mouth just looked sad now. How much of it was for his car, and how much was for the ending of their little moment out of time? Because that's all it was, all it could ever be.

"I'm not famous. Not really," Jaime said.

Wordlessly, Brienne handed him her phone. Jaime looked at it for a moment and then returned it to her, letting his head fall back against the headrest.

"My family is famous, I won't deny that," he said, sounding tired. "At least, we're famous in Australia. Nowhere else, though. I can walk about everywhere overseas and no one knows or cares, except for the Australian paps that go over there especially to stalk us."

He didn't explain exactly who he meant by 'us', but it didn't really matter whether he was referring just to his own family or more broadly to Australia's wealthy elite. Either way, that exclusive little group very much did not include Brienne.

"But that's the only reason the media is interested in me—because of the family I belong to. I've never done anything remarkable or newsworthy in my own right," Jaime continued. "I'm not a _celebrity_." He spat out the last word with distaste.

"I don't think all of these websites agree with you on that," Brienne said.

Jaime shrugged. "Maybe they don't agree, but I've never wanted it, I've never _sought_ it. The attention was always just there, because I was Tywin Lannister's son and heir. I never had any say in it." His eyes were on Brienne's face, watching her carefully. "This doesn't have to make any difference. Not to you and me. I'm still the same person I was yesterday and this morning." He held out his hand to her.

Brienne shook her head in disbelief. "Oh, Jaime, _of course_ it makes a difference. How could it not?"

Jaime flinched, as if she'd slapped him, and dropped his hand. "_Please_, Brienne," he said. "Don't make any decisions right now. Let's go back and talk. I don't know about you, but I could use a drink."

"All right," Brienne said. What else could she say? For a start, all of her things were still back in the—_Jaime's_—room. And she owed it to Jaime to at least hear him out. It was still hard to believe, but there was really no way that any man could have faked the sort of intense physical attraction he'd shown her over the past twenty-four hours. That was its own sort of truth.

Jaime smiled at her, a tight little smile containing little warmth and no humour, and turned the key in the ignition.

They hardly said a word on the way back to the resort. Jaime kept his eyes on the road, while Brienne kept returning to look at her phone. She couldn't help it. All of those beautiful women, and then _her_? She didn't belong on those pages. She didn't belong on the arm of someone like Jaime Lannister.

It had felt so nice to walk down the street with his arm around her this morning, the pleasant ache between her legs, a constant reminder of having him there, turning into a sudden pulse of _want_ if she thought about it for long. It had felt better than nice. It had felt special. _She_ had felt special. She'd allowed herself to believe that the 'this' they both felt, that they'd admitted to each other over a table containing a beetroot latte, could be something more than just a week of companionship and sex. But of course anything else could only ever be a beautiful dream, when the two of them came from such totally different worlds, different realities. Even if it was good sex. Really good sex. Far and away the best sex of Brienne's life, to such a degree that even comparing it to her previous sexual experiences seemed irrelevant.

"I'm just going to call Bronn to come and sort out the car," Jaime said, after they got out of the car in the underground carpark. "I'll be up in a moment."

Brienne might have said something in reply, but he was already on the phone. She walked over to the lift and used the spare keycard that Jaime had given her this morning to unlock the button that would take her to the top floor. She waited, facing outwards, as the doors closed, and Jaime was lost from her view.

It felt strangely final.

Brienne got out of the lift and let herself into the suite, putting her bag and hat down on the small table near the door. It was quiet in here. Silent. She realised she'd never been alone in the suite before. Jaime had always been present, except for that short time last night, and Brienne had been talking to Margaery then. She was going to have to start getting used to the idea of that, she reminded herself, of Jaime not being present, if not very soon, then certainly by the end of next weekend.

She should have known that a dream was all it could ever be.

No.

It was tempting to give in to the comforting lie, but it simply wasn't that… simple. Even if the ultimate outcome was always going to be about waking up and going back to her real life, what lay between herself and Jaime wasn't just wishful thinking on her part. She'd had enough experience of wishful thinking in her life to know the difference when something… _else_—she didn't even have the words for it—happened to her.

She went over to the huge windows and stared out to sea. Brienne understood why this view was one that Jaime kept returning to. There was something mesmerising about watching the waves crest and break as the waters about them swirled. White horses, her father had always called those choppy little waves with the white caps.

She was still standing there, watching the waves, when the door clicked open behind her and Jaime entered the room.

"Bronn's coming to take the Aston Martin away to be fixed, and to bring us something else to drive in the meantime. I'd say 'a replacement car', but…" He sighed.

No, nothing could replace his Aston Martin. But the women he dated, those were a different story. After scrolling through the extensive collection of images of Jaime that her search had uncovered, Brienne had found him pictured with the same woman a few times, here and there, but all the others were different. All of them were replaceable, and had been replaced.

"I'm sorry about the car," she said, at last turning to face him.

"I'm sorry that you had to find out this way," he said. He looked as sombre as she felt.

"You promised me a drink," she said. Her eyes pricked, and she blinked the emotion away. They were standing here exchanging observations, like two complete strangers—like they'd never been even when they _were_ complete strangers.

"Take a seat," he said, indicating the round, glass-topped table by the window. "I'll get the whisky."

Brienne sat, and waited.

Jaime was as good as his word, disappearing into the kitchenette that Brienne still hadn't been into after almost a day since she first arrived here, and returning with a bottle of whisky and two crystal tumblers. He sat down in the chair opposite Brienne and poured a large measure for her and then an equally large measure for himself, and set the bottle on the table.

"Cheers," said Jaime, raising his glass.

"Cheers," Brienne echoed, though she felt not at all cheery, and raised her glass to his before taking a cautious sip. The first thing she noticed was the smell of sweetness, not cloying but strong, and she braced herself for the usual 'cough medicine' sort of taste that she'd learned to associate with most spirits. But this whisky was nothing like cough medicine. The taste _was_ strong, not so much sweet as bitter right at first, and then liquid fire coated her tongue. Brienne swallowed it, felt the heat at the back of her throat going down, and then it settled in her belly, warm and soothing, leaving behind a tingling echo of a burn at her lips.

She hadn't realised just how lacking in calm she'd been until the whisky returned a little of it to her. Jaime was watching her from across the table, watching and waiting, she realised.

"Were you planning to tell me at any point?" she asked. She sounded calmer than she felt, her voice curiously level and not accusatory.

Jaime spread his hands. "No. Maybe? I don't know. I didn't think about it. I just…" He took a sip of whisky before he went on. "Brienne, you heard my name yesterday and it meant nothing to you, absolutely nothing. Do you know how long it's been since that happened to me? Everyone here knows exactly who the Lannisters are and who Jaime Lannister is. Even when I'm out of the country, the people I come into contact with are from the business world or the social world, and they know the position my family holds." He looked down at his glass, fingers splayed across the top as he rubbed his thumb up and down the side. "You… you didn't know anything about any of that. All you saw was _me_, Jaime. It was refreshing, and I didn't want to lose it—or you—before I had to."

Brienne stared at him, not knowing what to say. She sipped her whisky, adding to the warmth inside her, and found some words, somehow. "So tell me now. Tell me about Jaime Lannister and not just Jaime. You said that everyone here knows the Lannisters? Then tell me what everyone knows."

Jaime let out a bark of laughter, and it wasn't a happy sound. "The Lannisters," he said. "You've heard of the Murdochs?"

"Of course," Brienne said.

"The Lannisters are like the Murdochs, or, rather, the Murdochs would like to be like the Lannisters—at least they do if you listen to my father whenever he opens his mouth on the subject. The Murdochs have only been in the publishing business for a couple of generations. Rupert Murdoch founded his flagship newspaper himself in the 1960s. The Lannisters, on the other hand…" He stopped and took another sip of whisky, or something more than just a sip. "The first Lannister came out here sometime in the first half of the 19th Century, and got involved in the cedar cutting trade along the coast. Not as a timber cutter, mind you, but as the captain of a ship that carried the cedar down to Sydney to be sold. He made his first fortune that way, and then, in the 1840s, he bought _The Sydney Post_, and thus the media dynasty was founded."

"So, you—the Lannisters—own a newspaper?" Brienne asked, feeling her way around the subject as carefully as she could.

Jaime laughed, but it was the sort of laugh where you didn't open your mouth and just sort of shook a bit while your lips quirked. "We started off by owning _a_ newspaper, yes. But now we own half the major titles in the country, and we had dozens more regional newspapers as well before we sold them off last year. And then there's the television network, and the shares in casinos and… lots of things." He downed the rest of his whisky. "This isn't helping my case, is it?" he asked with a wry little grin.

For the first time in what seemed like an age, Brienne smiled at him. "No, not really," she said. "But keep going. Tell me about Jaime Lannister."

He poured himself some more whisky, and held out the bottle over her glass. Brienne shook her head. She hadn't even finished the first lot yet. The label on the bottle caught her eye. 'Lark single malt Tasmanian whisky, 43% ABV', it proclaimed in fancy embossed silver lettering. Single malts were the expensive ones, she was pretty sure, but that was the full extent of her knowledge. And anyway, would someone like Jaime Lannister ever not opt for the expensive version of anything? It seemed unlikely.

"Jaime Lannister," Jaime mused, fiddling with his glass and making the whisky slosh up and down the sides. "He's a pretty boring sort of fellow, really. Eldest son and heir of Tywin Lannister, chairman and CEO of Lannistercorp. Born in Sydney thirty-seven years ago. He's got a twin sister and one younger brother. His mother died when he was young, and his father packed him off to boarding school not long after that. Studied at Sydney University and Harvard Business School, and then came home to take up a senior position in the family business, which he still holds, even though it bores him to death. He lives by Sydney Harbour when he's at home, has escorted a string of almost interchangeable women to a thousand different-yet-eerily-the-same official functions over the years, until today he drove a pretty nice car, and yesterday he met a young woman who intrigues him. She's honest and sincere like no one else he's ever met, has the most beautiful eyes he's ever seen and the most sensational legs he's ever had wrapped around him, and he'd really like to get to know her better." Jaime held Brienne's eyes as he raised his glass. "Your turn," he said, and drank.

Brienne's face and neck burned with what felt like the most enormous and intense blush she'd ever experienced. She gulped some whisky and immediately regretted it as it burned along her throat and she coughed. Her eyes were watering when she got herself back under control and, to her relief, her blush had subsided, if only very slightly.

Jaime watched her, not commenting. He'd half-risen from his seat when she'd first started coughing, and then sat down again once he realised that she didn't need assistance.

"What do you want to know?" she asked.

"Anything. Everything. Whatever you want to tell me," Jaime said. "Why not start with a quick biography. I know even less about you than you did about me before that damned photographer crashed into us."

"Okay," Brienne said. "I was born twenty-four years ago in a mostly rural area on the east coast of England, near Norwich. The Tarths have farmed the land there for generations, and at one time we were supposedly barons who ruled over a nearby island—also called Tarth—with an iron fist inside a velvet glove. Or something like that. I don't really know. That's just what my aunt says."

"Oh," said Jaime, slapping his hand against his forehead a little too theatrically to be believable. "I have an aunt, too. I forgot about her. She wouldn't be pleased to be left out of the story."

"_My aunt_," Brienne continued, "is very much part of the story. She kept house for us after my mother died, when I was hardly more than a baby. I had one brother, Galladon, four years older than me. He drowned when he was eight, and after that it was just the two of us, my father and I—and Aunt Lizzie."

"I'm sorry," Jaime said. "That must have been hard."

"I saw my father come out of the water carrying Gall in his arms. I don't think I was old enough to truly have understood what had happened—that came later—but that image is as clear in my mind as if it happened yesterday."

Jaime reached out to where her hand lay on the tabletop, but he didn't try to take it. Instead, he just left his hand beside hers, more like a question for her to answer than an invitation.

"I went to the local schools," Brienne said, "but nothing I studied there interested me much. We would always turn up bits and bobs in our fields, though, little pieces of the past: broken bits of pottery, old coins, things like that, and once even a gold ring that had been lost for nearly five hundred years. I don't know if you've heard of Sutton Hoo, where they dug up that 7th Century Anglo-Saxon ship burial in the 1930s?"

Jaime nodded.

"That wasn't far south of where I grew up. I used to dream that maybe one day I'd find something like that on our land." She smiled at the memory, at the keen younger self whose enthusiasm was yet to be battered by the world. "I knew pretty early on that I wanted to be an archaeologist, so I worked hard to get the marks I needed to get into University College London—and I did. I've lived in London ever since."

"Except for right now when you've come to the other side of the world over Christmas. Why is that?" Jaime asked. Another person might have been sensitive enough to know not to ask a question like that. Or maybe another person might simply have not been as insightful, or as interested in her, to ask such a question. Whatever else she could say about him, there could be no doubt that Jaime Lannister was interested in Brienne.

"I don't like the short Winter days," Brienne said quickly.

"And?" Jaime said.

And of course he knew that wasn't all there was to it. Of course he did, even though Hyle, who had known her for years, took that same answer at face value when he'd asked her in passing why she wanted to make such a trip at this particular time of year.

"My father died last year, not long before Christmas," Brienne said baldly, trying to get the words out and over and done with as fast as possible.

"I'm sorry," Jaime said, and turned his hand on its side to loosely clasp hers. Brienne didn't try to shake it off or remove her hand. The warmth of another living person, even just a fleeting touch like this, was something she needed while talking about this. "It was sudden?"

"Cancer. He was diagnosed at the beginning of October, and barely more than two months later he was just… gone. I didn't want to be anywhere that reminded me of that time over Christmas this year, so when Hyle suggested this trip, I jumped at the chance. And here I am."

"Here we both are," Jaime said, squeezing her hand. "Two days before Christmas." He sipped his whisky, eyes on her still. "So you were planning to spend Christmas Day with Hunt?"

Brienne shrugged. "I suppose so. We hadn't really discussed it, but it's not like either of us were in a position to spend the day with anybody else."

"You'll come with me to Tyrion's for Christmas, then?" Jaime said. It was somewhere between a question and a statement.

"Jaime, I- I don't know if that's a good idea. Us spending any more time together at all, I mean." She slipped her hand out of his and down into her lap.

"I don't agree," he said, his voice hard and urgent as he leaned forward. "I still want our week together, Brienne. More than ever. I'll understand if you feel that you can't stay because I failed to be fully honest with you, though I hope I've explained enough that you can believe that I never intended to cause you distress in any way. But I hope you _will_ stay."

"What about those pictures? Are they just the start? Will photographers be dogging our every move, or camping outside on the beach?"

Jaime shook his head. "Now that the press have got their pictures, they'll most likely leave us alone. As I told you before, I'm not a real celebrity. Once those pictures appear, there'll be a little flurry of interest in who the new woman on my arm is, but it will settle down as soon as the next storm in a teacup comes along to grab their attention."

Brienne nodded. Maybe it wouldn't be completely impossible. Maybe. It would only be a week. Less than that, now. Something else occurred to her then. "Why is Tyrion, who is also a son of Tywin Lannister, running a coffee shop in a little coastal town?"

Jaime leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment. "How long do you have? No, don't answer that. I suppose, to be very, _very_, brief, Tyrion and my father have never got along. My mother died soon after Tyrion was born, and it changed my father. I think he's always blamed Tyrion for her death, without ever quite coming out and saying it. But last year, not long before Tyrion married Shae, he and our father had a spectacular falling out that resulted in Father cutting off Tyrion without a cent. Of course, my mother had left substantial inheritances to all three of us, so it wasn't as if Tyrion had nothing to fall back on, but he's no longer welcome in any of my father's houses, and Father never speaks his name."

"But why a coffee shop, and why there?" Brienne asked.

"Tyrion's always been a bit of a coffee connoisseur. It seemed like the perfect project to keep him occupied," Jaime said. "And as for why there? You remember I told you about the first Lannister? The one who sailed his ship up and down the coast?"

"With the cedar. Yes," Brienne said.

"He built a house on the north coast, near a small beach with a large, distinctive rock feature at one end. He named the house Casterly Rock, after the rock and after the village in England that he came from, and the town that grew up around it took the name as well. That house is still in the family. We would go up to Casterly Rock every year for the Christmas holidays when we were kids. So when Tyrion decided to open his coffee shop, he was determined to do it on what's essentially my father's doorstep."

Brienne stared at him. "Is all of your family like this?"

"Like what?" Jaime asked, looking genuinely surprised at the question.

"Don't worry," Brienne said. She looked down at the table, at her almost empty whisky glass. "Jaime," she said. And stopped. If she did this, it wasn't going to be easy to say goodbye at the end of their week. But it wasn't going to be easy to say goodbye even if it happened right now. And if she didn't do this, she'd always wonder.

"Yes?" Jaime asked, cautiously, when Brienne said nothing more.

"I'll come with you for Christmas Day, so long as it doesn't put Tyrion out, or especially Shae. I don't want to impose."

"You won't impose. Tyrion will be getting someone in to do all the preparations, including the cooking. And they'll love to have you. They liked you."

Jaime looked gleeful, like a little boy whose Christmases had all come at once. It was so very easy to smile back at him when he looked at her like that, but Brienne stopped the smile before it had a chance to form. It was important to get through this first.

"And I'll stay the rest of the week, as we agreed." She held up her hand as he would have spoken. "But if the press become troublesome, I have the right to change my mind," she added.

"Fair enough," said Jaime. He stood up. "So does that mean we're good?" His eyes were very intense and very green as he came to stand beside her chair.

Brienne didn't answer. Instead, she stood up and stepped close to him, right into his space. It reminded her of the way they'd been yesterday, in this very same room, when he'd told her he wanted to kiss her. "I'm tired," she said quietly. "Today's been exhausting." She didn't say why. She hardly needed to. She took a step back.

Jaime's eyes followed her.

"I'm going to go and lie down now," Brienne continued. "You're welcome to join me." She turned and walked away, towards the bedroom.

Jaime beat her to the bedroom door. He was smiling at her, a slow, sultry smile, when she got there.

"I told you, I'm tired," Brienne said.

"So am I," Jaime said, but that smile hadn't gone anywhere.

She ducked past him and into the bedroom. The maid had been in while they were out and the bed was made up, their various belongings neatly arranged here and there.

Brienne really was tired, and probably the very strong whisky was adding to that. She kicked off her shoes and all but fell onto the bed, face mashed into the pillow. The mattress dipped beside her as Jaime joined her. She felt his hand on her shoulder, rubbing in gentle circles, and when she turned her head, she could feel his warm breath on her cheeks. She opened her eyes, and there he was, watching her across the pillow. It was a sight that was already more familiar than she wanted it to be.

God, it was going to be such a wrench to give him up when the time came.

"I really am tired," she said, just to make it absolutely clear.

"Then put your head on my shoulder and rest," Jaime said. "I'm not going anywhere."

And so she did. His muscular shoulder was a comforting bulk beneath her head, his hand a soothing presence as he stroked her hair.

Brienne closed her eyes, and for a while she knew no more.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic brought to you by the distillery tour I did when I was in Tasmania last year. I can testify that their product is _strong_, because the three of us who did the tour that day were all very merry by the time we rolled into the distillery shop at the end. So don't be surprised that it helped put someone like Brienne, who never usually drinks spirits, to sleep. ;)
> 
> Also, if you're wondering why Locke appeared in this story instead of Vargo Hoat - Noah Taylor is one of a handful of Aussie actors to appear in the show, so I felt his character should be the one to feature in this universe.


End file.
